When she spelled out how to be The Perfect Housewife on BBC3, it all seemed so serenely easy.

But when Anthea Turner had to tackle some real work at her new 5 million house, she clearly found it something of a slog.

Wearing a tight-fitting lime-green top and leggings, Miss Turner, 50, was seen unpacking furniture from a storage company van parked in the gravel driveway of her five-bedroom property in Esher, Surrey, where shenow lives with her former property developer husband Grant Bovey.

Grimace: Anthea struggles with four large bins during a tidy up. She later turned her attention to vacuuming and loading up a van

Later she was spotted grimacing with effort as she lugged four plastic bins around. And she then loaded some items into the back of a Range Rover before switching her attention to vacuuming. Unfortunately, her husband didn’t seem to be around to lend a helping hand.

An onlooker said: ‘Anthea set to work after a van pulled up loaded with what appeared to be mostly expensive period furniture that looked as if it had been in storage for some time. It was put into one of the property’s three garages because the house is being renovated inside andout.’

The couple moved into the mock-Tudor mansion – which has a private pool, steam room and more than two acres of land – in April, just a month after Mr Bovey was discharged from bankruptcy.

Hard labour: The English TV presenter gets stuck in during a clean up and isn”t afraid to get her hands dirty

Mr Bovey’s financial problems spiralled when his buy-to-let property company Imagine Homes went bust in 2008 with 50 million debts and within the year the couple were forced to sell their 11.5 million Surrey mansion, ‘downsizing’ to a 5 million property in Godalming.

But by March last year, as the credit crunch hit hard, Mr Bovey had declared himself bankrupt. He received an automatic discharge a year later. Although he is now freed from his debts, Mr Bovey says he has not invested in the new property and that it was bought by his wife.

But since news of the couple’s latest 4.75 million property purchase broke, there have been angry outbursts from unpaid creditors, many of whom lost their life savings. More than 200 creditors are still owed a total of 3.4 million.

Cleaning up: Anthea keeps things tidy and loads the car outside her home in Surrey

Bond: Grant Bovey and Anthea Turner moved into their new multi-million pound home in April